


New Life

by Caffinated_Story



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Accidental Immortality, Immortality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 01:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8513659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffinated_Story/pseuds/Caffinated_Story
Summary: When you've lived for over a thousand years, you learn to hide.But not everyone who's immortal wants to hide. Some are desperate to be found and to find others.





	

Erik awoke to loud knocking on his door.  
He filed it under ‘must be a dream’ and rolled over in his bed.

Just as he closed his eyes again more knocking sounded – louder this time.

This was odd and startling for several reasons.

One: it was one at night if his bedside alarm clock didn’t lie.  
Two: he was top floor of a five story apartment building and no one he cared about knew he lived here.  
Three: he was certain he had set up precautions for these sort of things.

Grumpy and tired he shuffled towards the door. Peering through the little eye hole to see who was clearly trying to wake the dead so late at night.

The hallway was dark, but he could spot a pair of eyes staring right back at him.

“Who’s there?” He asked, not feeling like opening the door to random strangers.

“A new friend!” the man on the outside replied cheerfully.

“Fuck off.” Erik replied harshly. “It’s night time. Go away.”

“Don’t be like that. Not like you need sleep,” the stranger laughed and Erik wondered if he could push the idiot down the stairs and tell the police it was a attempted break-in.

“Everyone needs sleep,” Erik grumbled. “Go away.”

“I don’t need sleep, and you don’t need sleep,” the man hummed. “In fact, I would even argue you don’t need anything to stay alive.”

Erik froze, his hand hovering over his door handle.  
What was this man hinting at?

“Go away. I have no patience for drunks,” he hissed.

“I’m as sober as can be,” the man laughed. “But if you prefer to discuss your immortality over a bottle of wine then I’m sure we can arrange that.”

“What?” Erik barked as he ripped open the door so quickly he startled the dark haired man. His eyes almost shone with furry and he grabbed the stranger by the collar of his shirt, dragging him inside his apartment.  
With a loud bang he kicked the door shut as he lifted and pushed the stranger hard against the wall.

“Okay now that wasn’t exactly the reaction I was expecting,” the stranger wheezed as Erik’s grip tightened around his neck.

“Who are you?” Erik glared at him.

“Mircea,” the man whispered, a twinge of fear in his voice and eyes.

“What do you want from me?” Erik’s cold glare remained unchanging.

“Talk?” Mircea suggested carefully. “Can you let me down now? Please?”

“I am seconds away from flinging you out the window. So you have ten seconds to explain who you are and why you’re here and what you know.”

“Ten seconds?” Mircea looked horrified.

“Ten…nine…” Erik began counting.

“Okay! Okay! Shit,” Mircea squirmed and tried to get Erik to loosed his grip. “I’m Mircea Ionescu! I’m 157 years old and I’ve been trying to find others like me!”

“What?” Erik’s grip on Mircea loosened and Erik let him crash down onto the floor.

“Ow ow ow ow,” Mircea whined. “Fuck,” he cursed quietly. “I didn’t expect you to be so strong.”

“How do you know about me?” Erik asked, glare still pinning Mircea to the spot.

“You get bored when you’re on your own,” Mircea shrugged. “So I started looking for people who didn’t make sense. It’s taken me about, uh…” he paused and counted on his fingers. “Fifty or so years to track you down. You’re really good at hiding.”

“Not good enough it seems,” Erik grimaced.

“Dude I have so many questions for you!” Mircea smiled and stood up, straightening his shirt and jacket up and smoothing out some wrinkles. “I’ve made a list!” 

Erik watched in horror and amazement as Mircea pulled out a notebook from his pocket.  
“If I answer some, will you leave?” Erik asked.

“Sure,” Mircea laughed.

“Fine,” Erik sighed. “I’ll go make coffee…”

Mircea beamed, following Erik further into the apartment and gazing around as if he’d just entered a rare archaeological site.

“Is this real?” he asked and pointed to an old sword hanging on the wall.

“Touch it and I’ll show you just how sharp it really is,” Erik replied darkly.

“All right! Got it!” Mircea laughed nervously and took a long step away from the weapon. 

Erik grumbled to himself as he measured up the coffee, occasionally glancing over at Mircea to ensure the man wasn’t causing mischief.

By the time the coffee and cups where on the table, Mircea was fidgeting like mad.

“What do you need to know then?” Erik asked, taking a deliberately slow sip of his coffee.

“Do I get a set amount of questions?”

“Yes,”

“And I just used up one right now didn’t it?”

“Two,” Erik said with a smirk.

“Shit,” Mircea frowned before flipping through his notebook. “Right, I’ll have to be selective then. You’re not going to tell me how many questions I get either I suppose…”

“Hm,” Erik refrained from laughing at how utterly useless Mircea was at this little game.

“That wasn’t a question!” Mircea looked worried for a moment.

“Proceed,” Erik replied stiffly.

“Ok, uh. How old are you?”

“Around 1140,” Erik shrugged. “Give or take a few. Some years have blurred together.”

“Wow,” he heard Mircea utter as he jotted down something in his notebook.  
“And uh, can you tell me how you became immortal?” 

“No,” Erik frowned.

“Aww come on,” Mircea frowned. “Help a fellow immortal out here! I really want to know!”

“Can’t help you,” Erik scoffed. “I don’t know how it happened either.”

“But…,” Mircea paused, glanced at his notebook and the shook his head. “Okay no wait, fuck the rest of my questions. How can you not know?”

“I simply don’t,” Erik shrugged. “I don’t see why this matters to you.”

“It matters because I want to find others!” Mircea smacked his fist so hard against the coffee table that his cup almost fell over.

“Others?”

“Yes! If I exist and you exist, then surely others must too!”

“There may be some truth in that…” Erik sighed.

“Aren’t you interested in finding others?” Mircea leaned forward and stared so intently at Erik that it was making him uncomfortable. He hadn’t had this much attention directed towards him since he survived a particularity nasty trench battle in WW2.

“Not really…” Erik grimaced. “I keep to myself…”

“Don’t lie,” Mircea frowned. “You own five real estate companies around Europe, you’ve got a thing to say about how to run two different banks in two different countries and you’ve been a lecturer at…” he paused and flipped through some pages in his notebook before continuing. “Six different universities the past fifty years!”

Erik gaped.  
“How, how did you discover this!?”

“Like I said,” Mircea shrugged. “I got bored being alone.”

“I thought I covered my tracks,” Erik sighed.

“Oh you did. I gathered you’d been alive for more than fifty years, but I can’t find any trace of you further back in time.”

“I see…” Erik trailed off and stared accusingly at his phone, time to revert back to something not so high-tech.

“So… to backtrack,” Mircea hummed. “How did you become immortal?”

“I told you, I don’t know,” Erik grumbled.

“Okay, how did you discover you were immortal?”

“I…” Erik opened his mouth and then fell silent. His mind raced to simultaneously try to remember and forget the amount of times he’d thought he’d found a way to die.  
“A battle over some land. I was maybe ten?” Erik paused, trying to remember the details. “It doesn’t matter,” he sighed.  
“I was too young to fight, but that didn’t stop the attacks.”

Mircea was at the edge of his seat, staring intently at Erik with great interest.

“I remember my mother telling me to take my brother and run, so I did. He was barely a year old,” Erik continued.  
“I got as far as the forest before an arrow caught me in the back. I stumbled and fell. Said my prayers to the gods and hoped for a swift end. But that didn’t come.”

“What?” Mircea blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I thought I would die there, but I didn’t. It burned, the arrow I mean…” Erik said, taking another long sip of his coffee. “I heard the men come closer and I wanted to get away. So I decided to try. Not just for my sake, but for my brother.” Erik paused and stared intently at his coffee cup.  
Mircea didn’t say anything, he simply fidgeted with his own cup and waited for Erik to speak.

“Another arrow hit me as I tried to stand up. There was blood all over the ground, and I remember looking down and seeing the tip of one sticking out of my chest, and I thought that I should be dead,” Erik gestured with his free hand. “But by then adrenaline kicked in, so I picked my brother back up and kept on running. It wasn’t until I was far up in the mountains that I stopped to rest.”

“That-that sounds awful,” Mircea whispered.

“Hm, a little,” Erik shrugged. “I then realised I had two arrows still stuck in my body, but I was at least no longer bleeding. Not that I fully understood why at this point.”

Mircea looked aghast at the mental image Erik had painted, casting a glance over to the sword on the wall.  
“Than what?”

“I returned home that night to find our little farm was burnt to ashes. There was nothing left there for us, so I moved on. Found another farm and took up work there.”

“And your brother?” Mircea asked carefully.

“He survived that night.” Erik replied. 

“Is… is he like you?” Mircea asked, pen at the ready.

“No.”

“Oh…” Mircea’s gaze fell and he went quiet for a while.

“Tell me…” Erik said softly. “Have you left anyone behind?”

“What do you mean?”

“Family? Friends? Have you watched them die as you continue living? Have you buried them and then continued living?” Erik’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper.

“I… I lost my brother before I found immortality,” Mircea replied, biting his lip and glancing out at the night sky thought the window.

“Then perhaps you are lucky…” Erik sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you familiar with the concept of reincarnation?”

“Duh, of course,” Mircea rolled his eyes. “Not a new concept.”

“Have you witnessed it?”

“Uh,” Mircea looked puzzled. “No?”

“Right…” Erik nodded courtly and stood up from his chair, retrieving a large leather bound photo album from his book-case before returning to his seat.  
“I have watched my little brother die a grand total of 16 times…” Erik handed Mircea the album with a sombre expression.

“That, that’s not possible,” Mircea shook his heads, opening the album with shaky hands.  
His gaze fell to an old and faded photograph, depicting a smiling young boy next to a man that was undoubted Erik.

Mircea stared in shock.  
The next picture was similar, Erik unchanged but the young boy was older, his smile a little faded.

 

“He thought me to be a distant uncle in that lifetime,” Erik said quietly.

“That lifetime?” Mircea asked, flipping through the pages – watching the little boy in the photographs go from a young child to an old man.

“Mhm,” Erik nodded. “I find him in every new lifetime of his. He always looks the same.”

“That’s not possible,” Mircea muttered, flipping the page over.  
He gasped at the next set of photos.

There the young boy was once again, sitting on Erik’s lap and grinning from ear to ear.

Same story.  
The boy went from young to old while Erik remained the same.

Next set of photographs – a new era. More colour this time.  
Yet it was the same story.  
A young boy and Erik.

“What the hell?” Mircea whispered.

“He doesn’t remember me from life to life. I’m not even sure if it really is him, but he looks the same. Acts the same. Same voice. Same interest.” Erik bit his lip and stared at his own hands in his lap.

“Wow,” Mircea uttered at the newest set of photographs. This time Erik wasn’t in them, but the boy was still a dead ringer from the last ones.  
“This is weird.”

“Weirder than me still not being dead?” Erik snorted.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Mircea smiled a little lopsidedly. “How do you find him? I mean… when he dies, how do you know where he’ll be the next time?”

“Same family line,” Erik said. “Or along the same line at least.”

“Wow,” Mircea uttered, staring at the lest photograph in the album.  
The young man smiling at the camera was a dead ringer to the other ones in the past. Pale hair and pale blue eyes.  
The family resemblance to Erik was uncanny.

“16 times..” he muttered, trying to imagine being in Erik’s shoes. “That’s a lot…”

“Never gets easier either,” Erik admitted with a deep sigh, sinking into his chair.

“But,” Mircea swallowed nervously. “You’ve lived for so long, you must know so much! You’ve seen empires rise and fall!”

“Fuck all of that,” Erik spat bitterly.

“But immortality is fantastic! We can do anything! So many years ahead of us to explore!” Mircea smiled brightly. “The whole world to explore with all the time in the world!”

“No. It’s hell” Erik muttered. “You have to watch the ones you care for die over and over and over again…”

 

“You’d do that anyway if you were human,” Mircea tried to argue.

“Yes. Once and only once. But I’m not human, not any more,” Erik grimaced. “I’ve held my brothers hand as he took his last breath, for then to discover a few years later he’s reborn as a great grandson… Same eyes and face. Same voice and laugh. Same interests. But with no memory of me. Do you know how that feels?” Erik’s voice was filled with anger.

“No…” Mircea shook his head, avoiding the burning anger in Erik’s eyes.

“Well in have. I’ve watched my brother die and be reborn again and again. And ever time I tell myself that this time will be the last time, but it never is. Every damn time I find him again…”

“Is, is that why you own so many different real estates?” Mircea asked carefully.

“Yes,” Erik closed his ayes and rubbed his temples. “I figured I’d make myself useful to him and his family. I help him with loans he’d never get anywhere else. I find the best houses for his him and his children and his grandchildren.”

“That’s admirable,” Mircea smiled softly.

“Out of self interest really,” Erik scoffed. “So don’t praise me for it. I go around hoping he’ll one day recognise me…”

“He never does… does he?” Mircea whispered. 

“No…” Erik shook his head. “I’ve been an 'uncle’, a 'cousin’… a random neighbour. His real-estate agent and his banker. If he moves then so do I. Once he dies I move away, find his children or grandchildren… Watch over them until he’s reborn again.”

Mircea nodded slowly.  
This was not what he had had in mind when he’d tracked Erik down.  
Hell… he’d opened up Pandora’s box with this stupid visit.

The man across the table from him was an accidental immortal, someone who had not wished of wanted this life.  
Stuck on earth when he’d rather leave.  
Mircea pitied Erik.

But he also feared him.  
Erik had lived for so much longer.

Was this how he’d end up too?  
Bitter and angry?

“So…” Erik said and sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Perhaps it’s my turn to ask a question now?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mircea scratched the back of his head and smiled a little uneasily at Erik. “Of course. Ask away…”

“You wanted to know how I became immortal… but I don’t know or remember. Do you?”

“Ah yes… yes I do,” Mircea chuckled, trying to build up his courage and mood again. Erik’s story had shaken his belief up significantly. 

“Do tell,” Erik crossed his arms and stared intently at Mircea.

“I asked for it. Begged almost,” Mircea cleared his throat. “Went through every black and whit magic book I could get my hands on. Every spell was tested and tried out. If not once then twice or thrice!”

“And one worked?” Erik looked suspicious.

“I think so,” Mircea laughed nervously. “Or, well. One did! I’m just not sure which one.”

“You’re joking…” Erik blinked. “How can you not know which one worked?”

“Well I didn’t try to kill myself after each spell,” Mircea smiled. “I just kept doing different spells and rituals. And then one day I woke up in the burned remains of my own house, unharmed but with nothing left of my old life.”

“Ah…” Erik took a sharp intake of breath. 

“But I figured that if I had succeeded, then someone else would have too! And I’ve been searching for others for years now.”

“And I’m the first one you’ve found?” Erik looked puzzled.

“Yeah,” Mircea smiled a little sadly. “I’ve heard rumours and followed other leads, but no luck yet. I wasn’t even sure you were the read deal either until you pinned me against the wall!” Mircea laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his head. “You’re stronger than you look by the way.”

“Thanks…” Erik replied and rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“You were so hard to find too. I’ve been trying to attract other immortals attention to myself for years, but no bite.”

“You what?” Erik blinked.

“I run a blog!”

“A blog?”

“And I’ve got a youtube account, facebook, instagram, snapchat, twitter…” Mircea counted up on his fingers and grinned. “I post pictures of myself from archives and recent ones!”

“So blowing your cover?” Erik said hesitantly.

“What cover? I want to find others like us!” Mircea clapped his hands together so hard Erik visibly flinched at the noise.

“Oh my gods,” Erik groaned as Mircea dug out his phone to show off his blog. 

“For a moment I thought I was getting somewhere, but turns out people just think I’ve photo-shopped myself into old photographs,” Mircea sighed. “Which is just silly, because so far I’ve only gotten good at MS Paint.”

“End me now,” Erik muttered under his breath, regretting opening the door at all.

“But now I’ve found someone else! We can find others together!”

“No thank you,” Erik mumbled.

“Why not?” Mircea looked dejected. “Wouldn’t it be easier to live if we had others like us around?”

“Maybe…” Erik replied. “Not really… considered there could be others.”

“I’m sure there are others!” Mircea smiled from ear to ear. “We can find them together. Go explore!”

“Uh…” Erik fidgeted nervously with his hands in his lap. 

“Sleep on my offer,” Mircea winked.

“Yes…” Erik nodded slowly. He was no longer tired, but the idea of some peace and quiet again was still tempting.

“I can crash here, right?” Mircea pointed at the sofa.

Erik couldn’t hide the utter shock and disgusted look on his face at the prospect, and Mircea’s smile disappeared quickly.

“Please?” he begged.

“Fine,” Erik sighed. “But touch anything and I will find a way to kill you, understood?”

“Clear as water!” Mircea grinned and flashed him the thumbs up with a little too much enthusiasm for Erik’s liking. 

“Right,” Erik grimaced and stood up, flinging a blanket and pillow at Mircea. “My day starts at 6. So you have exactly 3 and a half of hours to sleep.”

“Got it,” Mircea winked. “And then we start looking for other immortals?”

“No. You can do that. I have businesses to run.”

“Really? You’re going to just be normal and boring?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s all I have left,” Erik hissed before turning on his heel and leaving the room, he slammed the door to his bedroom as hard as as he could allow himself to do.

He should have just ignored him.  
Should have let the door stay shut.

Erik groaned and massaged his temples as he flopped down onto his bed.  
One brief second of anger and all his hard work was gone.

Still, Erik thought to himself as he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom.  
If he was first cursed with eternal life, it was perhaps better to not be alone.  
Misery loved company after all.  
And all the gods knew he was miserable.

 

Mircea probably didn’t know better.  
He was still so young in comparison.

A breath of fresh air perhaps.  
A new start.

Yes, Erik nodded and allowed himself to smile a little.

A new start.   
1000 years too late perhaps, but a new start none the less.

**Author's Note:**

> Written based on a comic by Francofous on tumblr. gotta love Emma's work.


End file.
